Chapter Text
Sam snapped his wings back and pushed himself through the dimensions, covering a hundred miles in a single beat. His Grace hummed, and Sam could feel it properly now, the tug in the distance that meant that Gabriel’s soul was still out there somewhere. But frustratingly, he couldn’t get a lock on its location.
He snarled with frustration. According to his new memories, souls couldn’t survive for long in the aether. He couldn’t just leave Gabriel out there.
Deciding to go back to the place that he had died and figure it out from there he slingshotted across the earth, pulling his vessel along with him, homing in on his destination and sweeping it with all his senses before he landed.
Flying was, for some reason, more difficult now that he was thinking about it rather than relying on his instincts. It took all of his concentration to keep his wing beats in time and not crash land.
He backpedalled his wings and dropped clumsily down into his vessel in the rotting remains of the Elysian Fields hotel, staggering and using a table to keep himself upright. Standing still for a second and breathing heavily, he scanned the area again, just in case. A great many powerful beings had died here, and he knew that sort of energy had a habit of attracting scavengers.
Once he was satisfied that the building was deserted he set off walking through the rooms, his feet kicking up dust as he went, instincts driving him on. He passed though the entrance hall, skirting the desiccated corpses draped over furniture and sprawled across the floor. Rusty brown bloodstains still spattered the surfaces and flecked the walls.
Eventually Sam found himself in the dining room. He hesitated, the ghostly remains of an old energy surge still prickling against his wings, before pushing the door with one hand. It opened with a creaking sigh, deafening in the absolute stillness, as if the building itself was still grieving.
He ignored the skeleton by the door and touched the back of the singed table, remembering the events of five years ago. Or was it six now? But it had been lifetimes since the last time he was here. He frowned down at the spot where the imprint of a pair of enormous sooty wings were splayed with nothing in between them. Someone must have moved the body.
He spread his awareness out, searching.
There.
Sam snapped out his wings and flew again, barely more than an aided jump, alighting with a stumble at the edge of a field not half a mile away. To his surprise the body was six feet under the ground. Someone must have come back for it. Maybe Kali had returned. He inspected it, eyes closed.
There was little left of what had once been Gabriel’s vessel, only bones and hair remaining, the rest rotted into the ground. He knew it would be different from repairing his own body, only minutes dead. Rebuilding it would be a difficult task. He would need more help this time. He opened his eyes and thought for a second, looking out at the empty expanse of the field. What would they need to build a human body?
He flicked through his memories and the answer came to him unexpectedly from an old biology lesson. There wasn’t enough left to rebuild the actual body, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t make a copy. And the instructions were all here…
Taking a deep breath, Sam reached out into the soil. He searched deep in the marrow of the bones until he found some remains that contained what he needed- intact genetic information, a complete blueprint for a new vessel.
After a moment of hesitation, he selected one of the cells from his own body, scooping out his own DNA before inserting Gabriel’s into the nucleus and putting it in stasis. Now there wouldn’t be any problems with the molecules disintegrating before they could do anything with it. There were no living cells left in Gabriel’s vessel, and he would guess that creating life from scratch was more costly and complicated. More could go wrong and he only had a handful of borrowed memories and Cas’ knowledge of healing to guide him. He would wait until he could ask Cas for help. After all, he must have done something very similar after he pulled Dean out of Hell. And, the more he thought about it, maybe he should wait until he had located Gabriel’s soul to reform his body.
Leaving the bones under the ground, Sam laboriously took flight again, searching out Dean’s soul. For a few frustrating seconds he couldn’t find it, then he remembered the sigils on their ribs. Instead he locked onto the familiar signature of Castiel’s Grace and let it drag him back through the fabric of the universe, fighting to keep his flight even.
.o0o.
He meant to land right next to Castiel, but just before he reached him he felt a stinging collision with a force field. Thunder boomed overhead as he yelped and bounced off the wards like a fly hitting a windshield. It was like hitting an electric fence.
He dropped back onto the earthly plane on his back with a puff of dust outside the reach of the sigils. Picking himself up, he found himself to his surprise standing next to the bunker entrance. He stared at the door in confusion and not a small amount of worry. It hadn’t been more than half an hour since he had been in that farmhouse with Dean, but there was the impala. Also, it was clearly daylight. He could no longer feel Cas’ Grace, but if the wards preventing anything getting out of the bunker were as effective as those preventing anything from getting in then it would be like trying to sense an amoeba through a mile of concrete.
Sam rolled his shoulders and ruffled his wings, trying to get the feathers to lie flat again. All that achieved was making them more rucked up, so he gave up with a sigh and resigned himself to the uncomfortable sensation. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell, then waited.
There was the muffled sound of steps from the other side, then the door swung open and Sam braced himself. This wasn’t going to be pretty.
Sure enough, the holy water splashed off his closed eyes and trickled down his neck. His brother’s soul flashed with anger and its surface was swirling into distressed peaks, and he could hear all of Dean’s thoughts near on screaming at him, but Dean didn’t say anything. Sam blew a droplet off his nose as he took the silver knife from Dean and cut a small nick into his forearm, then momentarily lost concentration as he watched his Grace swirl up to the surface, licking under his skin to heal the wound.
Fascinating.
“Well? Where the fuck have you been?” Sam’s attention snapped back to Dean’s furious face and the worry behind it.
“I don’t know, one second I was with you, then I had to go, and when I came back here and it was daytime. I swear Dean, I couldn’t have been gone for more than half an hour. I’m just as confused as you are. How long was I missing?”
“Two and a half days,” Dean growled at him with narrowed eyes.
Sam closed his eyes briefly. “Shit. Where’s Cas?”
Dean jerked his head and stepped back inside. After hesitating for a moment, Sam stepped over the threshold with a wince of anticipation. To his relief he wasn’t repelled by the stinging force field, so he relaxed and shut the door behind himself, descending the steps behind his brother who was still radiating his irritation.
Striding through the main room, he saw a duffel on the table and faltered. “Were you going out again?”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, to look for you, you asshole.”
Sam caught up with Dean in the war room. “I take it that Cas told you? About what happened?”
“Yeah, he told me. Not that I understood everything he said, but yeah. And I woke up a couple of minutes after you left, saw the aftermath.” Sam shifted uncomfortably and Dean swept him with a searching gaze. “How do you feel? Any different?”
Sam thought about it for a second, hearing the real question that Dean was asking in his mind, are you still Sam? Are you still my brother, or are you something else? He picked his words carefully.
“No, not most of the time. I mean, it’s still a bit… overwhelming. I just changed species, you know? There’s all sorts of new instincts and other crap floating around. Like back at the farmhouse, all of a sudden I just… needed to go. But I still feel like myself, I’ve still got my soul.”
Dean nodded and kept walking into the kitchen. He reached into the fridge, pulling out two beers and offering one to Sam like an olive branch. Sam knew he wouldn’t be able to actually enjoy it, but he reached out and took it anyway. At the mention of his soul, Sam saw the flash of memories run through Dean’s mind like a film reel. His body, standing outside the front door, expression slightly too blank, limbs held slightly too stiffly. A ball of burning, glowing amber illuminating Cas’ face in a soft golden light as he reached for it.
“Woah. Is that really what I looked like?”
Dean glanced up, “Looked like what?”
“I saw my soul, in your mind. Is that really how I looked to you?”
“Yeah, it was.” The reel played again, over layered with a film of emotions. Beautiful.
“Aw, Dean, you’re making me blush.”
Dean did flush at that. “Shut up. Keep your psychic fingers to yourself, bitch. At least I know it’s definitely you, nobody else could irritate me so thoroughly within five minutes of showing up.”
“Sorry if I look a bit stiff, by the way. Being back in a body is a lot harder than you would think. It’s like I’m not really connected to my nerve endings any more.” Sam shook out his arms and tried to get the muscles in his back to relax naturally.
Dean shrugged nonchalantly, trying to brush it off but Sam could feel his acceptance and relief that he’d addressed it. “Not a problem, man. As long as you’re still in there. You went nuclear a few days ago, guess we should expect an adjustment period. You do realise you’re doing Cas’ head tilt thing, right?”
Sam stopped trying to see the other planes of Dean’s soul and jerked his head upright. Dean grinned, then his thoughts darkened again in disapproval. “Where were you? Cas wouldn’t tell me where you went, just said you were going to find yourself or some chick flick shit.”
“Well, he was sort of right. I need to talk to Cas about it, actually.”
Where was he anyway? Sam reached out through the maze of rooms and found his glow, then tapped as gently as he could against Cas’ Grace.
Evidently the tap hadn’t been as gentle as he thought, because the Grace recoiled with a wild ripple and a panicked yell echoed up from the dungeon. Dean’s head whipped around so fast Sam heard the vertebrae in his neck click and his soul swelled with protective concern.
“Cas?” Dean bellowed back, practically throwing his beer bottle onto the sideboard and bolting off down the corridor, drawing his gun from the back of his jeans.
“Wait, Dean, it’s just… oh, never mind.” Sam set off after him, trotting down the corridor, snorting to himself at Dean’s overreaction.
By the time he passed the shelves and walked through the concealed door, Dean was patting Cas down under the pretence of checking for injuries. Sam thought that if he came any closer Dean might start snarling like a protective mother bear.
“Dean, I can assure you that I am absolutely fine,” Despite his objections Cas didn’t seem to be in any hurry to stop Dean’s hands from running along his shoulders. Sam felt his lips curling into a smirk but plastered on a carefully neutral expression before Dean turned around, a worried frown on his face.
“What happened, Cas?”
“Dean, all that happened was that your brother tried to call for me, but at the moment he is a little… heavy handed with his Grace. Personally I think it is quite a feat that he can control it at all, but he needs a little practice with it. I also believe that this is why he has arrived later than anticipated.” He turned to Sam. “Using your Grace while in a vessel is a little different from when you are incorporeal. It will be harder to control and more temperamental at first until you get used to it. There is a reason why many angels had not taken vessels until a few years ago. Accidental smiting is quite common.”
Sam snatched his hand back where he was about to rest it against Dean’s shoulder.
“Yeah, it was much harder to fly with a vessel in tow. I almost didn’t make it back here. Thank God I didn’t drift too far in time, I could’ve ended up in the last century or something. Talking about flight, nice wings.”
Where only a few days ago Cas’ wings had been ragged bald shadows, now the tops of them were covered in thick, sleek scapulars. These gave way smoothly into the coverts, then finally into the long, gleaming flight feathers. The outermost primaries were still slightly short, not yet fully out of the gleaming silver sheathes that they had grown in, giving the wings a slightly stumpy look, but Sam could tell that when fully feathered they would be long and tapered, built for speed and manoeuvrability. All the plumage looked fresh and healthy, and although colour wasn’t really applicable to that particular plane of reality, they looked dark, almost black.
Cas preened slightly under the attention, ruffling the feathers and flicking the wings out briefly in what Sam instinctively knew was a friendly greeting, exposing their slightly paler undersides.
“Thank you, Sam. I also have to thank you for helping me to regrow the feathers. I was worried that they might not grow back in and that I would be flightless permanently.”
Dean was scowling at the air behind Cas’ back as though he could will the wings onto his plane of existence.
“Glad I could help. Sorry I’m back later than expected, I must have given you a scare.” Sam glanced guiltily at Dean, but he was still searching for a glimpse of Cas’ feathers.
“It’s fine, Sam. You couldn’t have known. I imagine angelic instincts are quite overwhelming if you are not used to them.” Cas glanced up and down Sam’s body, as though he was expecting to see something. “What did you find in Elysian Fields?”
Sam held out his palm, the cell containing the vessel’s DNA obvious to angelic vision and Castiel nodded, looking surprised. Dean looked down at his apparently empty palm and raised an eyebrow at him in confusion, trying to remember why Elysian Fields sounded familiar.
“I got Gabriel’s DNA, well the vessel’s anyway.” Sam explained. “I figured it would be better to get something that we know he’s compatible with. The body was too far gone and I don’t know enough about healing to put it back together. Anyway, it’s not as if I’ve found his soul yet.”
“Wait, you were trying to resurrect Gabriel?” Dean snorted incredulously. “He was an angel. We still don’t know where they go when they die. And there is no way that asshole ever had a soul. No offence, Cas, but it kind of goes along with the angel territory.”
“He wasn’t a pure angel, Dean. And anyway, angels can have souls. I’ve got one and Cas has too.”
Dean spun to look at Cas, who was staring at Sam wide eyed. “I have a soul?”
“Yeah, I saw it while I was out of body. Congratulations, man.”
“Sam, you must have been mistaken. Angels cannot have souls, our Grace prohibits it.” Cas sounded disbelieving, like he was trying to squash the hope that Sam could see blooming spring green across his mind.
“You saw my soul, didn’t you?” Sam shrugged and grinned at him. “Guess that whole ‘Grace isn’t compatible with souls’ thing was a myth.”
Dean clapped Cas on the shoulder and grinned at him, and Cas’ slightly shell-shocked expression turned to one of soft delight as he met Dean’s eyes.
“Yeah Cas, congratulations. Guess that makes you an honorary human.”
Sam watched, fascinated, as Cas’ smile grew to match Dean’s, both of them holding eye contact for far longer than necessary. It was the same contorted mating ritual he had watched them perform a thousand times, but this time they looked like they might actually have a clue.
He cleared his throat to remind them that he was actually still there.
Dean jerked back and flushed red, but to Sam’s surprise his soul didn’t retreat, the gold threads from the centre winding out towards Cas. In turn, Cas’ wings folded demurely behind his back but his feathers were so puffed out that he looked even larger than he usually did. Wow. Maybe something had happened while he was gone.
Dean rubbed at the back of his neck and changed the subject. “Sam, this is all super interesting, but I have a better question; why? Why, the hell, would you want Gabriel back?”
Sam could see exactly what dean was thinking. Why would he resurrect Gabriel, the same Gabriel who put him through mystery spot and endless hours of soap operas, procedural cop shows and Herpexia commercials? If he was in Dean’s shoes, he would be checking for possession and hex bags right now.
The truth was, Sam didn’t really know himself. Maybe he kind of understood the guy after all the snippets of memories he had watched.
He shrugged. “I figure we owed him after he faced down Lucifer for us. And I can feel it in my guts, he’s still out there somewhere, we can’t just abandon him. If he was actually dead, then I’d just let him rest, but he’s not, I can feel it tugging at my Grace. Not that I know where he is. It feels like someone’s hiding him.”
Dean frowned, obviously displeased, but his thoughts were too complex to pick out exactly what was pissing Dean off and Sam didn’t want to pry any further.
“I think I might know where he is,” Castiel spoke up unexpectedly. “A while age, Metatron abducted me and showed me an illusion of Gabriel. Until now I thought that was all it was, but it was very realistic. Much too in character for Metatron.”
“So, what? Metatron’s got Gabriel’s soul somewhere?”
“It would seem like it. He’s the only lead we have, if you’re sure that Gabriel’s soul is still around.”
“If he even had a soul,” Dean muttered.